The present application relates to an information management apparatus, method, and computer program product, and a communication processing apparatus, method, and computer program product, and more particularly, to an information management apparatus, method, and computer program product, and a communication processing apparatus, method, and computer program product that are applied to building and management of a social network service (SNS) community or the like.
Recently, communications through networks have been actively performed. For example, a community building service, such as an SNS, is a service provided through a network. An SNS is described, for example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-110616.
In this community building service, by registering user information including, for example, a profile of a user on a website which provides the community building service and making the user information public, the user can communicate, through a network, with many users who access the site.
The community building service such as an SNS causes, for example, the following problems:                a site similar to a blog site for keeping personal diaries is unintentionally provided        a closed community made up of exclusive members becomes an open community including a randomly increasing number of users who join the community        the number of ghost users increases because one user uses two or more IDs        a dating site is unintentionally provided        
In addition, the following problems may arise because an SNS community uses a network:                users do not see each other's faces        a large number of ghost members exist        
The above-mentioned problems do not occur if an SNS community is made up of well-meaning users. However, in actuality, users who have various bad intentions can join the community. It is thus difficult to avoid the above-mentioned problems.